Mustard Eating

Not mustard eatin', Buster Keaton. You heard me wrong! The best parts of his movies are like those compilations of scater wipeouts. The thrill of the cartoonish violence done to Buster's body is irresistable. Jackie Chan does some great stuff, but I'm yet to see him land directly on his face.

What a name to get stuck with...
You look so gentle, and it's so funny
When all of your body lands
On that impassive, almost holy face.

Louise Brooks - silent screen actress, much later an author, subject of fascination for a few of us. Pined over her again in a small part in a movie I saw last week. It is always odd to feel sexual attraction to a movie star, yet somehow it seems specially weird with an actress of Brooks' antiquity. There is some deep mystery in feeling the tug of a libido over so many years. To look at the silent screen, the black and white, the low definition, and to see looking back a flashing smile that literally makes my heart flutter and my mind beat for a moment with memories of unrequited love: that is unsettling. It makes me think of everything that seems as necessary as it is impossible, every freedom and happiness that I'm sure we should all enjoy if existence were just.

There once was a dancer from Kansa
Who can't be summed up in one stanza.

There once was a girl full of freckles
Who laughed at Topekan boys' heckles.
She'd just heard the news
That film's full of jews
Who'll throw a good-looking girl shekels.

There once was a joker, "The Tramp,"
Who was a quite rascally scamp
When courting Lulu
He dyed his wang blue
And fucked her while it was still damp.

n.b. A story from the autobio of Louise Brooks (Lulu) about Chaplin.

Weepy woppy, teary tyrolese

There once was a singer from Bremen
Who bore a cup he kept his phlegm in.
When asked, "Why the jar
Of yellow catarrh?"
He coughed, "It works better than lemon."

[n.b., some singers use tea with lemon to lubricate their throats.]

There once was a builder in Krakow
Who murdered his wife with a backhoe.
She made him attack,
For though he's named Jack,
She insisted on calling him Jack-o.

A dam in the area is nearing collapse. Apparently grit trapped underneath the dam has been gradually boring tunnels through it, one grain of earthen dam at a time. It could go any minute, or not at all. They will have to drain the reservoir to fix it. I feel a sensual unease as I think of the corruption of the dam in its pitch-black depths, its rusted and collapsing pipes, its water-logged core, of the slimy empty flats that will sit stinking all around the workmen slogging through knee-high mud and sludge. If it wouldn't kill and destroy, I would love the Long Tom River to just wash it away. Without any warning, without any fanfare, that lump of dirt and rust could just slide into oblivion.

This keeps me company.

Homeboy, Officeboy

I was once declared a cool kid's homeboy for a few seconds. I thought he was mocking me and I said something grumpy. All he wanted was to be my homey, and I rebuffed him most cruelly. I really must have been an awful child.

We are like saltines to the gods;
They crush us for their sport.

A tumbled moment passed between our psyches -
You offered me some access like a dare.
I looked around to see your smile of power
And saw some hint of yielding still in there.
But my Salvation Army shoes aren't Nikes.
I'm not your homeboy, certainly. I'll glower.

Somehow iambic pentameter is different when Shakespeare does it.

I am, I am, I am, I am, I am
Repeating like a trucker full of spam.
You are, you are, you are, you are, you are
Repeating like an echo from afar.
We is, we is, we is, we is, we is
A funny mister and a lovely Ms.